Gigante Says He Was Crazy . . . Like a Fox

By ANDY NEWMAN

Published: April 8, 2003

It is a classic image in the popular history of organized crime in New York: the feared mob boss shuffling along the sidewalks of Greenwich Village in his bathrobe, muttering like a man deranged.

Yesterday, the mob boss, Vincent Gigante, 75, the head of the Genovese crime family, walked into a Brooklyn courtroom in prison clothes, his gait uncertain but his voice steady. He wanted everybody to know something: the Oddfather, a role he has played and repeatedly reprised since the 1960's, was, in large part, an act.

Mr. Gigante, already in prison for racketeering and murder conspiracy, and facing a trial on new charges that could have meant another 10 years in prison, took a plea yesterday and admitted what the authorities had long maintained: that for years, in order to avoid prosecution, he had deceived the psychiatrists evaluating his mental competency.

He was sentenced by Judge I. Leo Glasser of Federal District Court to three more years and is now not due out of prison until 2010.

Mr. Gigante, a former light-heavyweight boxer, was gaunt and disheveled yesterday, his gray hair greasy, his beard scraggly, his blue prison shirt askew on his shoulders. While being sworn in, he briefly raised his left hand instead of his right.

Mr. Gigante evidenced further lucidity after his plea, when he was allowed a 10-minute courtroom meeting with his son Andrew, who, as part of the same case, was about to plead guilty to extortion charges that will probably put him in prison for two years. Though the elder Mr. Gigante's words could not be made out across the courtroom, his body language spoke volumes.

His gestured eloquently with his hands as he talked with his son. His big brown eyes were alert and engaged. He appeared to crack a couple of jokes. He recognized relatives in the audience and blew them kisses. He looked, on the whole, relaxed and relieved.

Afterward, his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, deflected questions on whether Mr. Gigante had pleaded guilty in order to help secure a better deal for his son. He said that his client, who has a heart condition, among other ailments, was simply physically unfit to weather another trial. ''I think you get to a point in life -- I think everyone does -- where you become too old and too sick and too tired to fight,'' he said.

Mr. Gigante, known to his associates as Chin, did not admit to running the Genovese organized crime family from prison, though that was the main charge against him in the current case. He pleaded guilty, rather, to obstruction of justice for running a seven-year con on the legal system that delayed his racketeering trial from 1990 to 1997 while his sanity was being examined.

Mr. Gigante's latest trial was scheduled to begin today, and prosecutors had said they planned to play audiotapes and videotapes showing him ''fully coherent, careful and intelligent,'' running crime operations from behind bars.

The United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Roslynn R. Mauskopf, appeared content with the three-year plea. Ms. Mauskopf said that for Mr. Gigante, three years amounted to a life sentence: She said her office had calculated, based on Mr. Gigante's age and his health problems, that he would not live to see freedom.

''The jig is up,'' Ms. Mauskopf said outside the courthouse. ''Vincent Gigante was a cunning faker, and those of us in law enforcement always knew that this was an act.''

Mr. Gigante's criminal record goes back to the 1940's. In 1957, he was indicted for, but acquitted of, the shooting of a famous mob figure, Frank Costello. His first major conviction was in 1959, when he was convicted of heroin trafficking.

His run as the Oddfather dates back to the mid-60's, when prosecutors say he began faking mental illness after learning that he was being investigated on suspicion of bribing police officers in Old Tappan, N.J. In that trial, in 1969, psychiatrists for the defense testified variously that he was insane, psychotic, schizophrenic, and infantile, and that his condition was irreversible and rapidly deteriorating.

But 34 years later, the question of whether Mr. Gigante is a complete fraud remains unsettled. Mr. Brafman, his lawyer, said that while his client was coherent enough to enter his plea, he was ''clearly suffering from dementia.''

''The issue of competency is one thing, the issue of whether someone is or is not mentally ill is an entirely separate issue,'' Mr. Brafman said. ''I think anyone who has seen 'A Beautiful Mind' will tell you that the person could be very seriously mentally ill and still have some degree of rational thought.''

Mr. Brafman's only request to the judge after the plea was that Mr. Gigante, who was in solitary confinement pending his trial, be returned immediately to the federal prison hospital in Fort Worth, where he has spent most of his time since 2000.

As to whether Mr. Gigante's plea was motivated by a desire to help his son, who was facing a possible sentence of 10 to 20 years, Mr. Brafman said, ''It's a complicated decision and a lot of factors entered into the equation.'' Aside from the Gigantes, six other men pleaded guilty yesterday to related charges in the case.

An hour after his father's plea, Andrew Gigante, 46, looking unhappy but well-groomed, pleaded guilty to extorting money from an associate in the shipping-container-repair business. He also agreed to forfeit $2 million. He will be sentenced in June.

When reporters asked Andrew Gigante how he felt seeing his father for what might be the last time, he said only, ''How would it be for you guys?''

He did not want to say much about the subject of his father's health, either.

''Tough life,'' he said as he raised his umbrella and headed off into the falling April snow.

Photos: Vincent Gigante, in his famous bathrobe, in Manhattan in 1990. He admitted yesterday that his Oddfather pose was largely an act. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times)(pg. D3); Vincent Gigante, in 1997. (pg. D1)